Tonight was all about the amazing exploits of all our runners at the Yorkshire Marathon and 10 Miler on Sunday. Well done to everyone who took part either by running or supporting at the water station. An extra shout out to Carys, Sanjay and Lucy who had all run the 10 miler and made it along to tonight's session, and very special mention for Michael and David who had both completed the marathon and still felt like they couldn't possibly miss an epic GG session!

We were back off to Heworth Holme, a site of an awful lot of previous GoodGym group runs, however tonight was nothing to do with laying the path through the middle and instead was all about raking up an awful lot of cuttings from a grassy area. We met Maria from St Nicks at the task who gave a brief overview to the team who soon got to work. There was a mix of rakers, pirchforkers and draggers as the GG crew got stuck in and shifted an awful lot of the grass cuttings in no time at all and with remarkably few complaints from those who may have been carrying tired legs from the weekend!

After a good 45mins of some serious raking we stopped for a team photo around our marathon heroes before a quick fitness session which put them in the middle of our group and relied on them to guess who was leading the choreographing of the exercises. David picked out Paul Kelly in absolutely no time at all, whereas Michael probably could still be guessing now and would have no idea that Nikki was in charge of the exercises when he was in the middle! To be fair Michael took his punishment of a single star jump remarkably well.

It was then back to base with Ed leading the run and Neil backmarking, and with the slightly longer distance than usual we were very grateful for some of Jenna's delicious apple and cinnamon cake when we returned!

Heworth Holme is a little slice of countryside right in the middle of York. It might look wild but without maintenance it would all turn into impassable scrubby woodland. St Nicks manage the land to provide a range of habitats and today we were helping to scythe part of the meadow to encourage wild flowers by removing cut grass and so lowering the nitrogen levels in the soil to give the flowers a chance.

As usual, Jonathan from St Nicks made it look easy and had already done a chunk before we arrived. However despite our collectively less advanced skills we still cleared a large area of grassland and no frogs were chopped in half in the process (that I noticed anyway). Good to be back to some semi-skilled, destructive manual labour: what GoodGym does best.

6 GG Yorkies and 2 touristing from Lovely Leeds (nice to see you Aron and Rachel!) joined forces with the St Nick's regular volunteers for their session at Heworth Holme.

Our tasks today included:

• Digging up as much as possible of a ground spreading plant, the name of which I forget. All that's important is that it is NOT NATIVE and therefore must DIE (I'm fairly sure this rule only applies to plants). We quickly finished this ("would've taken us a couple of weeks without GoodGym!") and also removed a whole pile of random bits of metal and wire. Katie: "I found a wire!"... "It's ok it's not connected..anymore.."

• Removing brambles, nettles and roots from an area where trees will be planted. Whilst trying not to stand in the boggy bit. Louise: "Is this rhubarb? I've only ever seen it on the telly" (cue shock from the rest of the group)

• Coppicing some willow trees. "Anyone want to use a saw to.." "yes please" say Mitch and Katie without waiting to hear the end of the sentence. Agree first, ask later is our policy when fun tools are involved. An impromptu bridge was also made out of the coppiced wood which impressed St Nick's!

After a quick wash of the tools in the previously GoodGym-produced scrape pools we all disappeared off into the sunshine.

Photo credits to Katie and Mitch

A whopping 9 GG Yorkies turned out on a Thursday night join the volunteers of St Nicks in bashing some balsam.

Maria from St Nick's wasn't sure how much balsam there would be on the banks of Tang Hall beck, so she had brought along some plug plants (several different types of wort) that we could plant too.

Carl immediately got stuck in to clearing some ground on the bank to plant the plugs. Meanwhile the experienced balsam bashers confidently led the balsam virgins around the other side of the bank for a lesson in how to recognise Himalayan Balsam. It was there that we met our first hurdle... we couldn't see any balsam! Fortunately, it was Maria to the rescue, whose experienced eye picked the only sprig for metres around. It looked like we were on for a game of hunt the balsam before it could get bashed!

Across the other side of the bank, Tom arrived, clasping a paper map to his handlebars - he'd failed to read the event details and turned up at St Nick's ready for action. Let that be a lesson to you all! Fortunately Jonathan was on hand to mark out our location on an old fashioned map and sent him in the right direction. He joined Carl in the mission to plant all the plugs.

While the rest of the gang picked their way through nettles along the bank, Debs and I moved closer to the water's edge to see if we could spot our prize there. We quickly decided that the best strategy was to get in the beck, so we donned a pair of oversized waders each and took the plunge. Just as we entered the water, Emily arrived to join us for her 50th good deed! Make sure you give her a big cheer and look out for her wearing a black t-shirt and the celebratory Cape of Good Deeds, soon, on a group run near you.

By the time we'd walked through the beck as far as the rest of the group, not finding very much balsam on the way, everyone was holding a modest bunch of the invasive stuff. There was some there after all, but most of it was still baby balsam so we had to part the nettles and look really hard to find it all.

We spent a happy hour hunting, chatting and listening to Huw and Mitch mock each others' heights (which are at opposite ends of the spectrum). I was particularly pleased to find an almost fully grown balsam to pull up.

I've found a big one! (Leanne)

Size doesn't matter (Mitch)

Job done, we went our separate ways and are looking forward to doing it all again (in a different location) next week.If you want to join in, sign up here

On a beautiful cold sunny morning 5 GG Yorkies joined forces with the good people of St Nick's to do some clearing and improvement works at Heworth Holme. Most of us started with extensive bramble clearing, the brambles getting progressively longer and more tree-like as we went. As always the brambles fought back, twice stealing my hat and getting Ed in the eye! Meanwhile Richard had volunteered enthusiastically for coppicing and tree-removal duties (after careful instructions on which ones to kill).

We all converged in the epicentre of the Bramble Zone to fight off the Boss brambles, and remove some dead trees, playing a little game of who can get the biggest one, and then finally the battle was won (not before one free fought back and hit Rich on the head on the way down).

Rich and I then started a new task to clear part of the Bramble zone and dig a wildlife scrape, while the others continued with coppicing and clearing tasks. Not only did we find a wing mirror and an old cobble, we also struck scrape gold in the form of clay, and made a good sized pile to kick off Monday's group task (and get me some much-needed brownie points :-))

Two GoodGym Yorkies ran to help finish off the never ending footpath at Heworth Holme.

We arrived with our limestone lugging muscles ready, looking forward to basking in the glory of getting the path finished.

The first thing we noticed was that there weren't wheelbarrows full of shovels and mattocks waiting for us today. Instead there were forks, rakes and scythes... It turned out that today's task wasn't footpath building at all. Today we were tidying up the meadows around the footpath by cutting back silverweed and thistles, and raking the cuttings into habitat piles. We secretly breathed a scythe of relief that it was slightly lighter work than expected!

While some of the regular St Nick's volunteers set about scything, I raked up some pre-scythed cuttings from earlier in the week, and Paul gathered them up onto his fork and piled them up behind a forest of nettles and brambles.

A few hours later, it was much easier to see the footpath (which will probably be finished one day), what with all the pesky meadow cut back.